How Shakespeare can help us overcome loneliness in digital age

The Conversation

Montreal: Are you addicted to endless scrolling? Trapped by the algorithms on your smartphone? Theatre might just be the antidote.

“Denmark’s a prison,” says Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in one of Shakespeare’s most famous dramas. In this scene, he is speaking to his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been recruited to spy on him by his mother and uncle.

Hamlet isn’t imprisoned, but he does feel trapped by his circumstances. He comes to realise that his uncle murdered his father, married his mother and then seized the kingship. He is being watched. He wants to escape the surveillance of the Danish court.

More than 400 years after Hamlet’s first performance, experts have warned that we are trapped and manipulated by the surveillance of our smartphones. Our online behaviour has transformed us into marketable data, and addictive algorithms have bound us to an endless recycling of what we have “liked.” Digital tribalism threatens democracy This digital herding also affects who we interact with online. We often find ourselves gathering with others who like the same people and share the same politics, seeking both protection and alleviation from loneliness.

This new form of digital entrapment has given birth to a kind of tribalism — a strong sense of loyalty to a group or community — that political and social researchers warn may threaten a foundational practice of democracy: the possibility of authentic conversation among people.

The technologies of surveillance have drastically changed since Shakespeare’s time. Today, our habits are transformed into data by a virtual panopticon of devices.

The loneliness that many of us, especially young people, are suffering echoes Hamlet’s sense of isolation and inability to voice his true feelings.

While our culture is very different from Shakespeare’s London, his plays — and those by others — still have the potential to bring people together and help us think deeply about our shared experience.

Shakespeare’s playhouse conversations

In Hamlet, the prince knows something is rotten in Denmark, but he finds that he cannot speak publicly about it. All alone on stage, he says: “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.” Today, it seems, he could just as easily be speaking about how we curate ourselves online in our unquenchable desire to be seen and heard by others. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Consider Shakespeare’s playhouse, an extraordinary gathering place for thousands of people. It was a space where all kinds of people could have conversations with the actors and each other about all kinds of themes, like the justice of “taming” an unruly woman (The Taming of the Shrew), how to push back against the power of a tyrant (Richard III) or how Christians might think differently about Jews (The Merchant of Venice).

Shakespeare opened established ways of thinking to questioning, inviting audiences to see the world and each other in new ways.

And audiences in Shakespeare’s time didn’t just sit quietly and listen. They interacted actively and loudly with the actors and the stories they saw on stage.

Historical research suggests that theatre helped change early modern society by making it possible for commoners to have a public voice. In this way, Shakespeare contributed to the emergence of modern democratic culture.

Conversation pieces

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most frequently performed tragedies, and his anguish under a surveillance state speaks to our struggles for freedom and belonging.

In his soliloquies, he questions his indecisiveness, but he prompts the audience, too, searching for their support: “Am I a coward?” he asks. His questions break the fourth wall, looking for answers in the audience.

Sometimes they talk back: from an intoxicated spectator at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s who shouted “yes!” to a teenager at the Stratford Festival in 2022 who whispered “no,” audiences want to speak with Hamlet, responding to his self-doubt with their perspectives.

Hamlet knew about the theatre’s liberating power, too. In his search for a public voice, he chose to stage a play to expose corruption in Denmark. “The play’s the thing,” he said, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” Psychology researchers agree. Attending a play is proven to provoke the awakening of conscience, helping audiences empathise with political views that differ from their own. This understanding leads to pro-social behaviour outside the theatre.

Empathy, insight and social engagement

After watching a play by American playwright Dominique Morisseau about the impacts of the 2008 auto plant closures in Detroit, audiences were more likely to donate to and volunteer with charities supporting the homeless.

Seeing the vulnerability of fellow human beings onstage helps audience members become more empathetic towards each other’s experiences.

Theatre also helps the artists who make it rediscover their humanity. In the 2013 book Shakespeare Saved My Life, English professor Laura Bates writes about her experience teaching “the bard” to men in solitary confinement who could only speak to each other through slots in their cell doors.

One incarcerated person found a kindred spirit in Richard II, who is imprisoned at the end of his play. Reading Macbeth helped him understand the mistakes he made in his search for power.

A woman in a similar program in Michigan saw herself in Lady Anne’s grief in Richard III. Beyond empathising with the characters, prisoners also felt empowered to confront the roles they had played in their past and to imagine new roles for the future.

Building community

The path towards empowerment or freedom through theatre is not limited to incarcerated spaces or grand professional stages.

Liberating theatre can take place wherever people gather: in living rooms and community centres; in parks and church basements; in a drama classroom or even on Zoom, where people can read plays aloud, improvise scenes from their own lives and create new stories together.

These modest theatrical gatherings offer something our devices cannot: the experience of being present with others in shared creative work.

When we step into the roles of characters, we step outside the algorithmic predictions that have come to direct or define us online.

When we collaborate to tell a story, we build the kind of community that allows us to bear witness for each other. Hamlet ends with the Danish prince asking his friend, Horatio, to tell the truth about what has happened: “In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.” The theatre’s liberating power belongs to anyone willing to gather with others, turn off their phones and tell stories.

Each small theatrical gathering becomes an act of resistance — a reclaiming of our capacity for connection and conversation.